Andy Rubin is famous for founding Android, which was later acquired by Google and turned into the largest computing platform on Earth. He left Google several years ago to look for new challenges, and now he’s arrived back in the Android ecosystem with a startup known as Essential. The company revealed its first phone this week after teasing it several weeks previously. The Essential Phone has a crazy edge-to-edge screen, a titanium frame, and the latest Qualcomm chip. This phone looks like it could even give the Galaxy S8 a run for its money, so let’s see how they stack up.
AMD’s Ryzen family has been a major story ever since it debuted several months ago. We know there’s a new high-end, 16-core variant, dubbed , on its way in the not-too-distant future, and now we’ve got some early rumors on what clock speeds might be. Oh — and AMD has trimmed the price on existing Ryzen 7 CPUs as well, in case you’re interested in buying into that family, but were hoping for a bit of a price cut first. Let’s talk about the price cutting first. It’s not clear yet if the current price trimming is permanent or not, but Tech Report reports that the Ryzen 7 1700 has gotten trimmed from $329 to $315, the Ryzen 7 1700X has dropped to $350 from $399, and the Ryzen 7 1800X is dropping from $500 to $460.
Noctua is one of the best cooler manufacturers on the market, with an impressive array of hardware solutions for virtually every type of case or environment. They’ve earned a reputation for standing behind their designs with full-color installation instructions, kits that include any screwdrivers or other tools necessary for installation, and upgrade kits that generally allow users with one type of CPU socket to a newer variant at . This last is a particular favorite feature of mine, since CPU TDPs haven’t changed much at the top end in at least a decade. The Austrian company also has a reputation for developing excellent fans that push plentiful amounts of air without the accompanying noise, and it showed off some of its work in this department at Computex this year.
Looking for a small, workhorse laptop that you can take with you just about anywhere? Today, Lenovo is offering up the 14-inch IdeaPad 510S at a 28% discount. And thanks to the dedicated graphics card, solid-state drive, and fast memory, the price-performance ratio here is solid. • (List price: $929.99 — Coupon code: IDEA510DUS) Inside, this configuration features a sixth generation dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U CPU, a discrete AMD Radeon R7 M460 graphics card (with 2GB of memory), a 256GB solid-state drive, 8GB of DDR4 RAM (2133MHz), Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi support.
Now more than ever, our security is being threatened by malware. Ransomware and botnets are big business these days, and targeted attacks have become commonplace. Even the most careful among us can fall victim to the increasingly advanced techniques that governments and criminal organizations use to extort and harass high-ranking officials, competing companies, and the general public. In response, anti-malware apps are broadening in scope. No solution will ever be able to thwart every possible threat, but we’ve come a long way from the simplicity of just maintaining a virus signature database. Heuristics have improved immensely, the most vulnerable avenues of attack are being reinforced, and fast-paced updates minimize damage — there’s a lot going on.
The days of car thieves breaking the ignition cylinder with a screwdriver are long gone. In the computer age, even theft has gone digital. Members of a motorcycle gang from Tijuana, Mexico have been arrested by the FBI after by exploiting all those modern security measures that are supposed to make it harder to steal cars. The perpetrators were part of Hooligans Motorcycle Gang sub-unit called Dirty 30. Since 2014, the gang would cross into southern California to scout the location of Jeep Wranglers. After snatching the vehicles, they were driven back over the border to be stripped for parts.
xHamster, the extremely NSFW website that absolutely none of us have ever heard of, used, or visited, has partnered with a group of engineers to develop a motion sensor that would automatically minimize all of the windows on your desktop as soon as someone opens your door or walks into the room. The proposed , dubbed the “minimeyes”, would work in a fairly straightforward manner. You set it up near your wankworkstation, decide whether or not you also want it to automatically mute the audio when it minimizes all of the other windows on your desktop, and then arm the motion sensor.
Seagate and Microsoft have teamed up before to offer Xbox-branded external storage options, and the storage manufacturer has recently refreshed its product line to match the style of last summer’s . Beyond that, however, these new drives also offer a several-month subscription to Microsoft’s new Xbox Game Pass subscription service. We haven’t covered Game Pass before, so let’s take a moment to do so. Game Pass is, to some extent, an answer to Sony’s game-streaming service, but there are some key differences between the two. Like the Sony program, Microsoft’s has a monthly fee attached — $9.99 — but unlike Sony, these games aren’t streamed to you as you play them.
Andy Rubin, the founder of Android, has unveiled his first phone — and it’s set to make a real impact at the very top of the industry. The stunning , first by The Verge, is made of a combination of titanium and ceramic for extra durability. Any Rubin says the Essential Phone is “better able to withstand a drop test.” It will include an amazing edge-to-edge display with an even smaller bezel than what you’d find on the Galaxy S8. While there’s still a bit of a lip at the bottom, the 5.71-inch, 2,560-by-1,312 display (19:10 aspect ratio) goes all the way up the front panel, with just a notch for the 8MP front-facing camera.
